Doc­tors sign pe­ti­tion against hos­pi­tal vi­o­lence

A to­tal of 600,000 Chi­nese doc­tors have signed their names to an online pe­ti­tion call­ing for the end of vi­o­lent at­tacks on med­i­cal work­ers af­ter a physi­cian was in­jured by her pa­tient in South China’s Guang­dong province.

At­tacks on healthcare work­ers have trig­gered public out­rage, es­pe­cially in the med­i­cal sec­tor. In a poll pub­lished in May by the Chi­nese Med­i­cal Doc­tor As­so­ci­a­tion, some 13 per­cent of 12,600 doc­tors said they had been phys­i­cally as­saulted by their pa­tients last year, and nearly 60 per­cent had been ver­bally abused.

Doc­tors said they felt they were not re­spected and their per­sonal se­cu­rity was not well enough pro­tected in the work­place.

In June alone, 12 cases of vi­o­lent at­tacks on med­i­cal work­ers oc­curred in hos­pi­tals na­tion­wide.